Problem

YouTube is a global video-sharing platform used by millions of people. Users are able to upload and share their own content, as well as browse, search, and consume others' content. Users spend a lot of time browsing the site, not finding content that interests them or helps them with their problem. Let's imagine I was a designer at YouTube asked to create a chatbot for YouTube. How can a chatbot enhance the YouTube viewer experience?

Initial Thoughts and Questions

What is this bot going to do? A big part of YouTube is Search/Browse. For this project, let's focus on this for now.

Who are the users? YouTube is used by literally everyone. Let's focus in on a specific type of user though. If we focus on a younger audience, we can be intentional with some design decisions. Maybe in the future, this bot should be different based on who's using it or maybe learn as you interact with it but I want to keep this specified for this project.

Would this live within a 3rd party app or live natively within YouTube?

Why would the user use this instead of talking to a friend or browsing?

User Story

Even though this bot can be used by anyone, the primary use case will be for a younger audience starting out. I created a persona to make sure I understand the user's story.

Kayla is a 17-year-old high school student who loves YouTube. She loves everything from DIY videos like LaurDIY to videos just for laughs like Lilly Singh and Grace Helbig. Even though she watches YouTube everywhere, she's only subscribed to 11 channels. She scrolls through her home page but is overwhelmed with all the "Recommended" and "Related" videos and almost sees these as ads. Once in a while, she finds new channels to follow from a couple of her friends. She needs a new way to discover new content that feels more personal to her.

Decisions and conversation flows

I put some thought on the goals and purpose of this chatbot. I also jotted down some ideas after talking with some peers and wrote out a few potential conversation flows. This helped determine feasibility and priority as I begin working closely with an engineer on a prototype. I had to think about what's necessary and possible to do now for V1, what should be put off for a later iteration, and what isn't needed.

V1

Introduce users to videos or channels they might like.

Learn the user's interests based on conversations and site activity.

Have a "friend-like" personality and feel very personal.

Help user find content they are searching for.

Start conversations if none have happened in a period of time, can stop if user doesn't like this.

V2

User tells bot mood to adjust results or detect user's mood based on tone of language.

Can the bot tell if the user clicks on content it shares with the user? Or determine if what was shared was actually good or not? I'd like to research if users actually give feedback to bots when needs are met or not.

Bot learns even more details about user watching habits.

Bot experience for YouTube Creators (Can you record this? How many subscribers have I gained?).

Check out my notes below:

Prototype (WIP)

I'm currently working with an engineer and building a prototype to better show how this flow would work. In the meantime, I made some really quick mocks so you can get a better idea. These show that this agent would live within the native YouTube messaging service but the prototype may not.